December 10, 2004
Missing The Point
Yes, the question posed to Rumsfeld was not spontaneous, yes the question was brought to his attention through means that ensured it would get asked. No, I don’t have a problem with any of that. It’s only right that it happens to Rumsfeld or some member of the Bush team.
Elected and appointed officials of this government have a duty to answer to those they make decisions for, and this administration has done its damndest to avoid answering the the questions asked of them. It’s about time one hit them right between the eyes.
Spin, spin, spin. It doesn't matter to the Republicans that troop cheered the question. It's the one they all wanted to ask, but that doesn't matter to the Republicans. They just care that their dear, sainted Secretary of Defense was put on the spot.
Apparently they've forgotten that this is precisely the kind of uncomfortable position our politicians and officials are supposed to be in: explaining their policies and their mistakes. The reporter undoubtedly felt that the question would never get asked of the Secretary so long as he had to wait behind all the friendly reporters that Rumsfeld would call on first.
For so long, this administration has done its best to avoid uncomfortable questions. They've exiled reporters who ask the tough questions, threatened to freeze out those news organizations that don't play nice about Bush's policies, and restricted membership in their audiences to those willing to sign loyalty oaths.
Questions are vetted ahead of time, and effusively praise the president, and the people who ask them believe the best of their Commander in Chief.
The Secretary of Defense's attitudes are little different. He has been famously short-tempered with critics, with tough questions, with anybody who didn't simply go his way on things.
In all that time, they have not learned to answer by policy or by words the real questions Americans need answered. One could say the two are related. One does not act accountably when one is not held to account.
Minor ethical quibbles are raised to avoid answering that question, to avoid addressing the discontent among our soldiers. It all becomes a game of the poor old administration, beset on all sides by doubters, quibblers, and those who lack the vision to do things their way, the right way. It's all about whether the reporter has blue-state politics, not whether his charges are true. It's all about the question being set up, not about the responses the question got, and what that means about the conditions there.
The Republicans are finding every reason to doubt the truth of the things they're hearing about the war other than the reason that would matter, if it were the case: that the allegations were unfounded.
Personally, I am just sick of the word games, of the twisting of phrase, the smokescreen of partisan politics, used to bait the audience to distract them from what the party won't, and probably can't prove false.
They have continually missed the point of why these things are brought up. The purpose here is not just to embarass the Bush Adminstration, but to shame them into doing what they should have done in the first place. Whether that's basing a war on good intelligence, getting our logistics straight and planning to deal with worst cases, it doesn't matter- the questions are meant to provoke action, and to force solutions on a government that been dragging it's feet, trying to save political face.
It is time for the Bush administration to start fighting the real war: not it's one against the newsrooms that don't kow-tow to it, but the one against the insurgents, who are using our supply problems, our manpower problems, and the resentment of the people we are trying to save against us. Stop fighting our questions, Mr. Rumsfeld, and start fighting this war right.
Posted by Stephen Daugherty at December 10, 2004 12:46 PMWell said, Stephen! I totally agree.
Posted by: Adrienne at December 10, 2004 02:01 PMStop fighting your questions? Where are your answers?
Go right ahead and keep telling yourselves that it is the Republicans that do everything wrong and never answer any questions with a straight forward honest answer.
This tactic will do nothing but continue your anger and belief that Dems can do no wrong while repubs constantly miss the point.
Repubs are not ‘mad’ at that soldier. Repubs want the soldiers to have the best gear and protection.
That is one area you are mistaken about.
The second is that nothing is being done and that Bush should have waited until the soldiers had more armor? What are you people talking about? This problem with the insurgents didn’t even begin until a few months after the fall of Baghdad.
Just how many troops should have been sent in to Iraq? Does anyone really know the right answer to that? Just how does anyone believe that all those ammo dumps could have been secured while securing the border?? Get real people.
You are on a crusade. Plain and simple. Find a problem, big or small, and slam the Administration with all your might. Don’t try to find anything good, ever. It is against your mission to mention any good.
Knowing the White House is a possibility for the Dems in ‘08 leaves no room for discussion, compromise, civility.
It is all what the Dems would have done now that they know what happened.
Not impressive and tired of old arguements.
Find something new to talk about.
Maybe what the DEMS can do in the future? NOT what they would have done in the past.
Stephen - I’m with you 100% on the nedd for accountability. That’s why independent media is so important; otherwise nobody asks the hard questions.
I don’t think much of Rumsfeld, but I have to hand it to him for dialoguing with troops directly. But the big cojones award has to go to the soldiers who challenged the Big Boss directly.
Posted by: Chops at December 10, 2004 02:51 PMStephen
There is a valid disagreement about how the war is going. Opponents always have the emotional high ground. One mistake that causes death or serious injury is too many. But we live in a human world where even the best decisions have unforeseen consequences and a world were everyone makes mistakes.
Opponents of how the administration handled the conflict are engaging in three fallacies simultaneously. (1) In the light of subsequent information they are holding past decisions up to a level of scrutiny that implies near perfect information at the time. (2) They are considering only the negative consequences of the decision that was made. And (3) they are assuming a disastrous outcome in a situation still not decided. Let’s go through them.
1.We have discussed the quality of the information available before the war and there is a fundamental disagreement about who knew what, when and how, as well as what they should have known. Future historians will sort out (or not) this argument. Suffice to say, it is a lot easier to predict the past than it is to predict the future.
2. Each decision has consequences. Some options are closed; others open. Opponents assume that a more accommodating multilateral course would have brought better results. This is not a valid assumption. The situation in Iraq in 2002 was abysmal (see the 50,000 deaths a year below): in some ways less threatening than we thought at the time (re WMD), but in other ways more (re the corruption of the oil for food program). With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the UN would have done nothing substantial to stop Saddam Hussein from shaking off sanctions. Maybe he would have become peaceful. But remember that past behvior is the best predictor of future behavior.
Saddam maintained his capacity and programs to create WMD and had not given up his ambitions. Had we taken the UN course, it is very possible that we would be facing a stronger Saddam Hussein today. Maybe this time we would have been right about his WMD. Things could have worked out better, but they could also be much worse.
There is a valid argument that we should have gone in with greater force and perhaps greater ferocity. That argument was made less at the time than it is today and that would have also carried costs.
3. Opponents assume the whole endeavor will end badly. Here they rely implicitly on the emotional high ground argument. How can we accept that anyone was killed or any mistakes were made? This is not a valid argument. People have died in this war. We don’t know how many. Estimates range from less than 10,000 to more than 100,000.
But people also die in “non-war.” About 300,000 people were killed in the Sudan this year. Opponents of UN sanctions on Iraq before the war cited a report released by UNICEF in December 2000 substantiates the dramatic increase in child mortality in the past decade.
Under sanctions (before the war) UNICEF estimated that 50,000 children died every year from sanctions. “These people are dying because of bad water, inadequate diets, broken down hospital care, and a collapsed system,” they wrote.
Fewer Iraqis died as a result of the U.S. invasion than would have died if Saddam Hussein had remained in power, under many estimates.
Don’t take my word. Google sanctions, Iraq and civilian death and you will find thousands of articles. Read the ones written before the war. Many of these same people have changed their opinions ex-post facto, so don’t pay attention to what they said they said later.
So if you compare the result we will likely achieve in Iraq to what we had, it looks like this might end well. And I still have confidence that elections will be reasonably successful and we will look back on this endeavor as a reasonable (not perfect) success.
Well I think that this is a very tricky situation. There are really two sides to the situation, and both of them bring up really good questions. First off, if you were to side with the soldier, the question is why are we sending our soldiers into battle with inadequite armor? If we have the capability to save everyone in the army, why not do it? I mean, I would not like to find out that my son died because the government did not want to fund our soldiers with proper armor. However, there is another side to this story that kind of goes with Rumsfeld and I also feel strongly about. It is a much broader view. Do we really need the armor? How many causalties do we really expect over there? Plus, we are in so much debt right now, I don’t think we need to waste our money on armor that is not going to be used. If there is stuff to use over there for armor, wouldn’t it be better for us just to let them armorize their own vehicles with little or no cost to us? If they can get it for free over there and we can get it much more expensively here, I think the more economic thing to do is get it over there, or maybe even create companies to make it over there for free for our soldiers. Then you also have to ask yourself the simple question of should we be there in the first place? Well, it’s too late. The Bush administration has got us into so much trouble that we will now be forced to vote Republican now and possibly in the next election, because if this war does not end within the next 4 years, it would be too much of a risk to vote democrat in the next election, so whatever we need to do, it needs to be republican. I know that some of you may disagree with this, but the truth is that most americans will not vote democrat because it is too much of a risk that they will screw things up even more. I think that this soldier did ask a very well-thought up question, however, there is really no good or bad way to answer it. The question Rumsfeld should have asked back is “What is the risk involved in not having armor” because some of our troops don’t need it. Some do, and it would be economically benefitial for us for them to get it for themselves over there, because we are in deep debt and it’s just cheeper that way. That’s the bottomline. It’s not Rumsfeld’s fault, in fact there is no fault.
Posted by: Nick at December 10, 2004 04:15 PMJack,
On your “fallacies”
1.We have discussed the quality of the information available before the war and there is a fundamental disagreement about who knew what, when and how, as well as what they should have known. Future historians will sort out (or not) this argument. Suffice to say, it is a lot easier to predict the past than it is to predict the future.
Of course it is easier to “predict” the past (I think that’s a lingustic impossibility :) ) than the future. However, It is our duty in this country to be armchair quarterbacks. If we see that a bad decision was made, it is is not lack of loyalty to point it out, it is important to adress it so that those who got the answer wrong do not have another chance. We need to ask, given the information availaible, did they make the right decision. I say no. I have always said no. Those on the right say “everyone though saddam was dangerous”. Bush may have though saddam was dangerous, every democrat in office was afraid to vote against the war because they would be labelled as unpatriotic, and everyone else in the world though that Saddam was no threat. Guess who was right. We are able to assess the quality of the decision now because we know more now. That’s not a problem, it’s evaluating decisions and seeing who has good judgement.
(2) They are considering only the negative consequences of the decision that was made
I know that it seems like the left is only considering the bad consequences, but that’t not true. I know that the removal of Saddam Hussein was in and of itself a good thing. However, Its impact on our national security is likely to be a bad thing, and the deaths of our soldiers, who otherwise would not have died, is a very bad thing. Both of those things are rated by me, and I think others on the left, as extremely important. We think Iraq was a bad war for the US, and there has been nothing to change that assessment.
(3) they are assuming a disastrous outcome in a situation still not decided.
Over 1,200 American dead is already a disasterous outcome, considering that Saddam posed no threat to us. The uniting of the Muslim clerics that declare it the duty of all muslims to throw the US invaders out of Iraq is a bad outcome. Losing the respect and friendship of the entire world is a bad outcome. I think the right is more guilty of believing fervently in their totally unproven claims of viral democracy than the left is in demonstrating bad effects. I think that Iraq may end well. I think democracy has a chance, because, as in Afganistan, people really do want freedom. However, it may end very badly. I don’t think a free Iraq will lead to other free states, and I think that in terms of fighting terrorism it’s a complete reversal of good sense.
Yes, saving the Iraqis from Saddam is a good thing. However, if that was the reason to go to war we would have gone to Darfur (sp) and ended the genocide. Or spent the money on ending hunger in sudan and saved 300,000 lives. If it was worth mobilizing our entire army to take out Saddam, it would have been easier and far less damaging to us in the world to do so in Darfur, and saved just as many lives.
I think that given the quality of our military and our ideals, that we are likely to succeed in Iraq no matter how much the administration screws up, no matter how many innocent people or our own soldiers are killed because of thier negligence or incompetence. That doesn’t mean that they were right or that we shouldn’t judge them for their actions.
Posted by: brian at December 10, 2004 04:26 PMBrain
We should judge. I agree. And your post is very reasonable in that respect. What I am pointing out is that there was no zero option. Doing nothing, or going the multilateral route would have resulted in something else than we have today, but maybe not a better outcome.
I know “predicting the past” is an oxymoron, but that doesn’t stop people from touting their successful ex-post facto predictions.
Saddam was a threat. He called himself the enemy of the U.S. He evidently didn’t currently have WMD, but he had recently possessed it and shown his inclination to use it. He maintained the infrastructure to reconstitute WMD.
In the “what we know now” and didn’t know then was the extent of the oil for food corruption. That was one of the driving factors in preventing effective UN action and would have soon destroyed effective sanctions. The French (Ivory Coast), Russian (Chechnya etc) and the Chinese (Tibet et al) did not threaten to oppose us because they were seeking peace on earth or because they thought we might fail. They were more concerned we might succeed.
I’ve been quiet about the Rumsfeld story. The story has been out there for some time- I commented on the problems with the lack of armor just recently, the helicopter pilot who is more worried about making the trip from Baghdad to Tikrit in an unarmored vehicle than he is about flying choppers- but what really strikes me about this story is the power of the medium.
We’ve all known about the problems with unarmored vehicles for some time. It took the power of television to bring this to a boil.
In the adjoining column there are numerous commentaries on this story. The more recent post discusses the deficit. This is a rather cold-hearted statement, but the deficit is arguably a far more important issue than a seargant asking the Secretary of Defense an embarrassing question. Let’s watch the number of posts and gage the level of emotional involvement. Again, what amazes me is the pure power of tv.
Looking ahead: you know, the situation in Iraq hasn’t even reached the point where it will be really interesting. What will happen when the Shias assume power? Will they rule wisely, or ruthlessly? Will the Kurds & Sunnis embrace the concept of a loyal opposition, or fight a full-scale civil war? Will the Shias be uniters, or dividers? As incredible as it seems, we haven’t even come to the difficult part.
Posted by: phx8 at December 10, 2004 05:34 PMJack,
Thanks for the compliments, I try to be reasonable as often as possible.
About Oil for food,
This is, I think, the Republican equivalent of the left’s always predicting bad outcomes in Iraq. I had never heard anyone say that the sanctions were going to weaken until after the report came out showing that Saddam had no weapons. The Duelfer report only said that he wanted to end sanctions, not that they were actually ending. Regardless of the corruption, regardless of the problems with oil for food, the sanctions had prevented Saddam from obtaining WMDs.
The oil for food corruption had been going on for 7 years, and Saddam still had no WMDs. He had no facilities to make WMDs. The report only said that Saddam had the desire and intent to get them. It takes years to develop that kind of technology. So, assuming oil for food was so corrupt that the sanctions were lifted in a few years (which does not seem likely to me, considering that the US can veto any action on sanctions, and the people involved in making under-the table money would probably like to keep it under the table), then there are a few more years until WMDs are available. That doesn’t constitute an imminent danger worth calling off the fight against actual terrorists for in my book.
Plenty of people call themselves the enemy of the US. Saddam was probably the least likely to be able to actually do anything about it.
Also, saying that the oil for food corruption was why everyone was against the war is just wrong. Maybe some of the governments and a few arms dealers objected for that reason. However, the truth is that an overwhelming majority of the people of the world were adamantly against the war. Do you think that Spain and Canada were in on the oil for food corruption? I haven’t heard anything about Germany being involved, and they were one of the most outspoken critics. Even the people in France had no idea about oil for-food kickbacks.
My point is that the idea that everyone had the same information, so you can’t blame the administration, is wrong, and is basically just passing the buck for bad decisions. Blame the troops (Guliani), blame France, blame physics or the army (Rumsfeld), blame the CIA (Bush), blame eveybody but themselves, seems to be the administration’s stance for every mistake. In the “culture of ownership” and an administration full of “strong leaders” I’d like just once to see anyone take responsibility for anything. I guess they just mean poor people when they talk about that stuff. (I’ve probalby just blown my “reasonable” status, but I got mad for a minute)
-keeplyingtoyourselvesdems
Where are our answers? Last time I checked, mister keeplying, your people were in charge. So, your people have the answers to the question the soldiers, that report, and I have been asking. If I thought Republicans couldn’t give me a straight answer, you know something, I wouldn’t even try. I believe they can make that choice, but they’ve dug themselves into a political hole defending the undefendable.
If the Republicans want our soldiers to have the best gear, armor, and vehicles, there’s nothing stopping them. Again, they are in charge, and it is there decision whether pork or beef is on the appropriations menu. I’d prefer good old fashion red meat appropriations myself.
Additionally, maybe you should remember that this was an elective war, Mr. Keeplying, and therefore, we had all the time in the world.
As for the numbers of troops, supplies and whatever else, mr. Keeplying, there are people in the Army who do nothing but figure out such things. If they wanted 200,000 soldiers there, they could have done it. and they should have had more soldiers, because they couldn’t invade, secure ammo dumps and close the border with the troops they had. They couldn’t even stop looters in Baghdad, for heaven’s sake. That’s how light we went in, and if you known anything about the preparation of the war, that is in fact heavier than Rumsfeld wanted to go in. There’s documentary evidence that he wanted to go in with sixty-five thousand. If you want to take over a country right, you do it with overwhelming firepower and you establish control of the place from top to bottom. Anything else just emboldens people to resist you. I know some people want to say that more soldiers on the ground would mean more targets, but they forget that the soldiers aren’t passive targets. They shoot back. Get enough people with M-16s in enough places, and the will to resist gets remarkably reduced. That’s a fact.
As for crusades, it seems your people are on one to excuse this kind of incomptetence, to lower the standards so your people pass. Don’t get the funny idea that I just do this because I want to see a Democrat in office. Sure, I won’t hang my head in despair if that happens, but, I sure will expect a great deal of him, if only so I don’t have to hear equivocation from people like you saying that my party’s president is no better than yours.
As for new arguments, I would say when old facts are still true, and and old problems still unresolved, yes, I will stubbornly make old arguments, because nothing changed enough to make me reconsider things.
Jack, first comment-
1)It’s not subsequent information. That I could live with. The biggest problem is concurrent information they had at the time. These guys knew plenty of this information was false or unreliable and used it anyways. They padded a case they knew to be thin with information that analysts had told them wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. They manipulated bureacratic structure and applied political pressure to ensure this war would go forward. This wasn’t a mistake, this case was a deliberate deception to justify the war to the American people.
Additionally, I think you should consider that our response to terrorism will take it’s lead from what we do now. So, if we start with bad strategies and bad tactics, if we foul up our relations with other countries at the start of this, we could end up regretting this later. Long-term wars require long term thinking, and so far this administration has shown poor foresight.
2)The funny thing about Republicans and positive consequences of the war, is that they are reduced to reciting generalities. What is that you say? The situation has improved, The evil tyrant is overthrown, an evil has been confronted, we’re about to hold elections, we’ll get most people into it and the others wouldn’t have involved themselves anyways. You site positive opinions mostly. Meanwhile, we can recite chapter and verse of the massive problems in manpower, equipment training, loss off terrority, rates of casualties- facts. We’re not just running around with our hair on fair screaming “we’re all going to die”, we’re telling you the technical details of the problem. And all we want is for your people to deal with it, and then, having fixed things in Iraq, never pull a stupid stunt like this again.
For your information, Saddam had the intention, but not the means of production. Those are Kay and Duelfer’s conclusions
3)It’s called contingency oriented thinking. We’re saying, you’ve got to take care of this. Screw the politics, he’s already a second term president, and we’re stuck with him. Just get things done. Of course, there will be media fallout on your end of things, but then, he deserves that for not being straight with the American people. Besides, do you really thing a politician’s reputation is worth anybody’s life?
In terms of casualties, if you admit nothing, there’s no win there either. The toll matters, because it is an indication of the situation. If you are arguing about the numbers of deaths, you’re also arguing about the need to do more to prevent those deaths In the end, you’ll have to face the results, and I personally would feel much better if we had done something to slow the casualties of this war, than if we had done nothing.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 10, 2004 06:06 PMBrian-
Blame Canada! Blame Canada!
(apologies to Parker and Stone)
Nick-
Noooo one, Nooo-ooo one, No one really isss…
To Blame.
(apologies to Howard Jones)
Jack-
Look, some people are right, some people are wrong. We weren’t doing nothing, unless you define doing nothing as not taking military action, in which case war is your only choice.
These predictions weren’t just pulled out of people’s ears, these were people who knew the region, knew the politics, knew the logistic, and just simply didn’t get listened to, and facts are on their side. You can never effectively plan to succeed if you do not acknowledge or research how your plan can fail or be hindered.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 10, 2004 06:18 PMI would prefer never to fight wars. Even the winning side loses promising young people. War is always uncertain. At least one side is completely wrong about its chances (the losers presumably wouldn’t fight if they were sure they would lose.) Maybe some day there will be no significant wars. This is not as outlandish as it sounds. Consider slavery. It existed throughout all human history in every society, until only about 200 years ago some people decided not to tolerate it anymore. But is it also important to remember that these people subsequently imposed their will on the rest of the world and sometimes still have to punish the backsliders. Even good causes require muscle.
In the world we have now is not the world most of us consider ideal. We still need the threat of force and sometimes the application of it. In a world of mostly peaceful people, the most violent will always rule unless they are restrained and violent men must be restrained by violent means. One thing is for sure. Excessive pacifism causes wars.
I feel very lonely holding up the defense of our policy in Iraq, but here I will stand. I believed before and believe now that Saddam Hussein represented a unique threat and a unique opportunity.
The threat because unlike the other nasties around the world (Robert Mugabe leaps to mind, but there are others) Saddam’s state was well organized (by the standards of dictatorships), had access to oil wealth, a messianic following among some other Arabs, a proven record of aggression and a past use of WMD. Beyond that, he lived in a neighborhood of weaker states with access to significant, unearned oil revenues.
The unique opportunity was that he was currently vulnerable (unlike for example Iran or N. Korea. And he, or his successors would probably be less vulnerable in five years.) and taking him down brought the possibility of getting in front of the curve in the greater Middle East. (As I wrote on the other side, I believe radical change is coming there soon, no matter what we want. I won’t repeat it here.)
Did the Bush administration make significant errors in strategy, tactics and execution? Of course they did. This happens in any war.
FUBAR and SNAFU are terms the militray invented. Why? But I ask you to consider real world alternatives. Compare the U.S. operation in Iraq with the Russians in Chechnya or the French in Ivory Coast. Or compare the U.S. with itself in Kosovo or Somalia. Or even compare our action in Falujah in May to those last month.
Or compare the quality of our diplomacy. Ask the people in Ivory Coast what they think of Chirac. Has anyone seen his approval ratings lately. It might not have been smart for the U.S. to antagonize France. How smart was it for France to antagonize the U.S.? Did Chirac get the outcome he wanted? How about Kofi Annan’s leadership with Bush’s. Ukraine is an interesting case right now. How are we doing there?
Nothing makes any sense except in comparison to something else. I wrote almost the same thing during the Presidential election. When so many people were confident that George Bush would lose, I pointed out that it was true generically – except that the real world challenger couldn’t beat him. He didn’t. I don’t see a viable alternative to what we are doing in Iraq either.
We’ve all known about the problems with unarmored vehicles for some time. It took the power of television to bring this to a boil.
Sorry phx8, this is where I disagree. Yes, this problem has been out there for quite some time, but it took the guts of one soldier (and the ingenuity of an embedded reporter) to confront Rumsfeld in an unscripted setting, to bring about a resolution.
The media has been so coward by this administration, why are we only finding out now that the manufacturer of these armored Humvee is: a) still producing below capacity; b) told the Pentagon as much; and c) was just waiting on an order from the military? There is an estimation that 20% percent (200 deaths) may have been prevented, given soldiers had proper Armour. In addition, many of the trucks used for supplies - another primary target for Insurgents - also fail to have the proper Armour protecting rear troops from enemy fire.
Finally, the hysterical Bush apologists are slowly discovering their running out of ‘diversionary ruses of deflective blame’ (i.e. Liberal Dems, Dan Rather, Kevin Sites), to effectively mute justified criticism of Bush’s failures.
They’re gonna need to put away the smoke n’ mirrors, and start coming up with answers instead.
Posted by: Bert M. Caradine at December 10, 2004 10:45 PMJack,
I admire your tenacity, and ability to present a good case. I agree that war is sometimes necessary. I was completely in favor of the war in Afghanistan, for example.
All of your descriptions of the threat posed by Iraq, however, are descriptions of how Iraq used to be, before the first gulf war (another war which was probably justified). We showed we could deal with him then, and the sanctions left him in a severly weakened state. His organization and access to wealth don’t matter much if he can’t use it to hurt anyone.
On opportunity, I think this point contradicts your last one. If Saddam was such a good target, why was he such a threat? I don’t think the thinking that he or someone else might be a threat in five years justifies offensive war.
I think the opportunity that Iraq represented was an opportunity for the Bush administration to gain political capital, run as a war president, and settle some old scores while the country was angry about 9-11. That may be cynical, but that is how I felt before, during and after the war. It may have been an opportunity to try out a new experiment in middle east viral democracy. Or, giving the administration as much of the benefit of the doubt that I can, it was an opportunity to remove a brutal dictator with the backing of the country.
I like that Saddam is gone, I agree with you about that. I don’t think it was worth it, but I like it. What bothers me the most even about the third possibility is the administration’s lack of trust in the American people and the way the war was sold. If they wanted to take out Saddam, I don’t really think there would have been that much of an objection. By trying to link Iraq to the war on terror, including the phony yellowcake reference in the state of the union address, Powell’s UN speech, and all the other attempts to link the two they used the tragedy of 9-11 to justify war, and lied to the people. What’s more, they lied to the world, and shot our credibility.
A further issue is the magnitude of the mistakes. Yes, mistakes happen in war. However, seldom if ever do mistakes happen that expose the United states as hypocrites (the discarding of the Geneva convention) and inflame the rage of the Islamic world (the Abu Gahraib scandal). These are not tactical errors which result in battlefield losses, they are strategic, command decisions that lower the united states in the eyes of the world, and frankly, in my eyes. I don’t want my president to use me as an excuse to torture people. I think we’re better than that, and the rest of the world used to, too. Someone should be held responsible for mistakes like that.
Even the battlefield mistakes are administration mistakes. The dicounting the possiblity of insurgency, the lack of armor, the back-door draft show that the administration cares more about politics and theory than the soldiers.
One difference between the mistakes made by the administration in this war compared to others is that this is our first offensive, unprovoked war in a while. We had every opportunity to prepare for this war. We could have moved in as many troops as we wanted. We could have waited for more armored hummers to be produced. But, Bush had to meet his arbitrary deadline. These mistakes were not caused by enemy initiative, or as a result of our need to respond to an attack quickly. We could have had any army we chose, but went in unprepared and with bad plans.
As far as your comparisons, I am not well versed enough to really compare them that well, but I’m pretty sure that France has not dismissed deeply held prinicles in invading the ivory coast. THe world doesn’t hate France, etc. I may not be understanding your comparison. If it is that France makes mistakes, too, I agree, they do. However, this doesn’t diminish the unique magnitude or pervasiveness of our administration’s mistakes. I also don’t really understand the election reference.
The viable alternative was not to have invaded, or to have told the truth about why we did and garnered support. We now have no alternatives, but that doesn’t mean that those who got us into this mess are justified, or should be excused in any way, or that we should just forgive them and work with them to continue in their errors. I can’t un-elect Bush. I can only try to show people his mistakes and hope we learn enough not to let this magnitude of error happen again.
Posted by: brian at December 10, 2004 11:56 PMWhat’s the problem with the Humvee? It’s a glorified jeep. It was never meant to be used in a frontline war. It’s not built to carry a great deal of armor, nor is it built to withstand the kind of armament used there.
Of course, unless we want to start putting together some APCs to use for the patrols, the IED’s are going to keep on taking their toll.
Rumsfeld says it’s a supply problem. The factories making these things are saying the Army isn’t asking for them, that they could produce more. Some factories are saying they need another 18 months to get it’s furnaces up and…
…and whatever we do, we’ve got to do better than this. There will be imperfect solutions. There will be no satisfaction until this war is over and our soldiers are not in harm’s way.
That is no excuse for what has come before. There can be no excuses when people are dying for mistakes, when you’re explaining why kids are dying young for your cause, your error, your misinformation. Once it becomes an issue of mortality, fear enters into it, and if you don’t have a satisfactory answer, people rightfully let their survival instincts take over. People would be shocked about low double digit body counts in the wars of the 90s because we didn’t sense those wars mattered. Now…
…Now, despite our best efforts, the world has become a more violent, more unstable place. We recognize that, but we still don’t want to be involved in unecessary wars.
I see Iraq as something we have to fix because we broke it. Faster we get it fixed and get out of there, the less it will act like a black-hole for every other priority we have. Put simply, we want Iraq done an over with.
Paradoxically, that means we want our country to spend all the time that’s necessary to make this work. Otherwise, we feel, our haste will translate into deeper entanglements and resistance in the region that we don’t need.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 11, 2004 12:17 AMI think this issue was aired before the election. Why was no action taken on it until now?
The difference now was the poignancy of a soldier directly asking Rumsfeld, and the resounding cheers of the soldiers. They couldn’t spin it as those damn negative Dems, or “gotcha journalism” from the left wing press.
Did a Chatanooga journalist set it up? Perhaps. Did he set up the cheering troops? Doubt it.
Will Rumsfeld let this Q&A happen again? Unlikely.
Has anyone noticed no more pitures and computer links for the US Troops, since Abu Ghraib.
Substance or Image? Anyone? ….Bueler?….Bueler?
Posted by: Greg at December 11, 2004 01:14 AMI see Iraq as something we have to fix because we broke it. Faster we get it fixed and get out of there, the less it will act like a black-hole for every other priority we have. Put simply, we want Iraq done an over with.
I agree 100%.
But some of you seem to be under the impression that firing and replacing Secretary Rumsfeld would be a good solution. This is really wishful thinking because it’s not going to happen.
This is the second thread on WatchBlog to discuss this issue, and as I am writing this there have been 101 comments posted between them. For all the people rallying for Rumsfeld’s ousting, there has been not one poster suggesting a replacement. President Bush could appoint the most liberal Democrat in the history of the country as SECDEF and some of you would still have a problem, simply because Bush liked him!
We already know there is a problem. No one is disputing that. What we should be discussing is what to do next.
Some of you have said President Bush’s war planning wasn’t based in reality. Is calling for Rumsfeld’s removal any different?
We need a plan for what to do next in the Iraq war. But let’s base our plans on the reality of the situation.
Please.
The Traveler,
Sam Nunn, Richard Cohen, Joe Biden, John McCain, Bob Dole, James Baker, Bob Kerrey and Max Cleland.
Take your pick.
Your defense of Rumsfeld is disingenuous and exaggerated, at the very least. Removing Rumsfeld won’t win the war, however we would greatly improve how efficiently we execute it. Every time a glaring problem finally hits home, Bush apologists want to redraw the line in the sand, in a newly bi-partisan effort to ‘get it right’. This enables you to avoid the significance and lasting effects of this and previous blunders - as if they never occurred.
This administration has had close to two years to come up with ‘a plan based on the reality of situation’, while the ‘discussion on what to do next’ has never included anyone of a differing opinion.
Posted by: Bert M. Caradine at December 11, 2004 02:22 AM
Love or hate Rummy, it don’t really matter much, but there is a reason to exclude reporters from the Q+A with military command.
A stupid reporter coached a simpleminded solider to ask some questions and make statements that NEVER should have been ask in that format with world media looking on !
Everyone knew that some trucks lacked armor and some didn’t, but look at what was said;
“while some of our trucks have armor, we are moving out, headed north, and those trucks don’t have armor” ( not an exact quote but close).
Why not just call the terriorists and tell them, “get your roadside bombs ready, a soft target is headed north, ps, we have been diging around in scrapyards for steel, so putting a few boobytraps in there might be a good idea.”
If I was in charge all those reporters would be out of Iraq, except that one, he would be walking ahead of that convoy headed north !
Posted by: Beagle at December 11, 2004 08:41 AMWhy do we have to suggest replacements, traveller? Last I checked, that was your responsibility as the party in power.
Believe it or not, Rumsfeld was popular for a while. I liked his style on the podium during Afghanistan. My mother liked the fact that he went in and saved people at the risk of his own life. He’s not a man without redeeming qualities, any more than Robert McNamara was bereft of redeeming qualities himself. But both had their theories, both had their egos about the subject, and both let it get to their heads.
Rumsfeld needs to go, in my book, because as long as he is there, he will try to prove that his theory on military deployment will work, because the alternative is a sort of defeat that he does not want to experience. He wants to prove himself right, and as his theories of deployment have failed so miserably, it’s likely he will be rolling that rock up the hill for the rest of his term.
I don’t believe Rumsfeld will deal with the problem, because doing so means he must admit the problem. He won’t base his plans on reality, but on the wishful thinking that his theoretical approach to the war can still be salvaged.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 11, 2004 09:06 AMBeagle
It matters a great deal. From what I have seen and read, the soldier came up with question. He just asked the reporter how to formulate it. The response to the question should be telling to you- this wasn’t some blue-state Librul colluje boy kwestion, this was a soldier asking something each and every person in that auditorium was concerned about. They weren’t cheering his rendition of “The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly In The Plain” They were cheering that somebody finally stuck the question to the old man.
Our lack of armor is common knowledge, and the insurgents have no need to listen to some Q+A on a television station they may never get to find that out. They’ve done experiments in the field, so to speak. If you see an explosion blow a vehicle almost in half, you don’t need anybody else to tell you that there isn’t enough armor. You know that already.
Also, it’s been in the media for the past year, so nobody is all that surprised that the subject of armor has come up. hell, a month or two ago, the armor issue was on 60 Minutes. If you think it’s some sort of tactical secret that’s just been blown, you’re sadly mistaken.
So many of these things, Beagle, these folks can just tell by looking with their own two eyes. They can tell our patrol routes well enough to put bombs in their way, right?
It’s easy to shoot the messenger, but you know something, it’s much better to deal with the bad news itself. You see, that solves the problem, or at least adapts us to it, rather than covers it up. This is about the integrity of our leaders. If you cover up a problem, it just gets worse. If you deny there’s a problem, it just gets worse. Integrity isn’t just about character, it’s about having both feet on the ground of the consequences of your actions. If you got that, then you can get somewhere in what you’re doing, because you’re not resisting the reality of the situation. People can forgive a person in a difficult situation who does their best better than they can forgive somebody who simply whines about being criticized and does nothing. Humility and power are a refreshing, and often pragmatic mix.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 11, 2004 09:26 AMI nominate Colin Powell, let a professional do it.
Posted by: Greg at December 11, 2004 10:15 AMStephen,
You missed my point. That solider identified THAT convoy as having no armor,AND where it was headed. If he had said that some of our trucks in Iraq lack armor, when can we expect all to be armored up, that would be fine, the enemy knew that.
Stephen, let say that you are a solider in Iraq, at that meeting, and for whatever reason, they ran out of body armor, that reporter got someone to identify you as having none and where you were going, would you be as happy about the question/statement ?
Its like saying; “Stephen, the tall guy..third in the line…is headed up this road…without body armor..easy target”.
Anything said to the media is known worldwide and by the enemy in a matter of minuets now, are you starting to get my point?
Beagle,
Your argument is more of the same buck-passing and misdirection that so characterizes this administration. A valid point about the failure to plan and equip the troops is brought up by a soldier, and what is your response? He should have kept his mouth shut. Again, blame the troops, don’t adress the problem. Did that convoy get blown up? No, so there was no harm done by the question. Trying to distract from the real situation by blaming the reporter or the soldier, however, is destructive, but not unexpected.
What is even more damming to Rummy isn’t just that it took a reporter planting a question with a soldier as the only way the lack of armor on their vehicles would ever have a chance of being dealt with for our troops.
After a full year of complaints and numerous deaths and even more dismemberments, we learn that he also didn’t make sure they got cheap, easily produced scrambling devices that would have kept a lot of those IED’s from detonating.
The “insurgents” have been using things like cell phones and remote doorbell ringers to make the explosives go off, and those scramblers could have saved a huge number of lives and limbs over the past year.
It all points up the glaringly fact that Rummy really doesn’t give a sh*t about our troops, but only makes an effort to do his job when the press starts badmouthing him. And that makes it even more obvious after his long list of failures during this war that he should have been fired a long time ago.
Beagle, the question is, how would it make that truck any different than half the vehicles out there. These convoys are not meant to be frontline vehicles.
You want a comparison? When crap got heavy in Somalia, Clinton took the soldiers out of the Humvees and put them in APCs. Why? Because Humvees are glorified Jeeps
Here, crap gets heavy-
And it’s business as usual.
The risk of death and injury inherent to war is not justification for unnecessary risk. if you want soldiers capable of fighting, and vehicles capable of transporting troops safely, you go with armor.
You also go with necessary soldiers. We fought the Gulf War with 700,000 troops, with 200,000 from other countries, and 500,000 from our own.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 11, 2004 01:17 PMIf everyone could just forget how much they hate republicans for a moment, you might understand the reason for not indentifiying soft military targets.
Posted by: Beagle at December 11, 2004 01:40 PMBeagle,
Is it partisan to say that mistakes have been made and we should do everything in our power to fix them?
I don’t think that a soldier on the front lines gives a rats ass whether the guy covering his flank is a democrat or a republican. All he wants to do is do his job and come home. So, lets give them the tools to do the job.
This “problem” was known about a year ago. The republican response has always been “we support our troops”.
Well, support them.
You can’t win a war on a budget. If that is our aim then we shouldn’t even be there.
The front lines on the war on terrorism is not in Iraq. I don’t know wher that line is because anti-americans lie in wait all over the worls. The war in Iraq is fraudulent. Americans were lied to from the start about the mission. The real mission is to control the oil there. Controlling the oil even through puppet government makes all the sense in the world to America. Imagine if Iraq was not part of OPEC?
That would be a windfall of monumental importance.Let’s not be fooled by dems or ‘pubs when they say they have America’s best interest at heart. “Show them the money!” , and they will dance like Energizer Bunnies.Let us not fight amongst ourselves anymore.Middle America, everyday average Joes and Janes are the backbone of our great country.Let’s not be manipulated by the elite and the powerful anymore. Our forefathers set up the constitution to give the power to the people. We need to take that power back. I am sick and tired of being force fed what to think by both sides. Let’s take back our country. Grass roots campaigns that endorse people who are people , not savvy slick handed politicians manipulating evry thing around them. Our divisiveness is exactly what keeps them in power. Take it back America!!
Beagle, why don’t you answer any of these arguments?
If everyone could just forget how much they hate republicans for a moment, you might understand the reason for not indentifiying soft military targets.
Once again, shifting the blame and trying to distract the argument. What evidence is there that anyone here hates republicans? All of the logical, concrete descriptions why republicans are doing a bad job? Even if we did hate republicans, would that invalidate any of the numerous arguments presented here? Do you actually think this war has been prosecuted well? Do you really think Rumsfeld is doing a good job? If so, why not explain why you think that. It seems to me that the Republicans are the ones who are so convinced of the rightness of their position that they don’t need to defend it, they can just label anyone who is against them as republican-haters. Posted by: brian at December 11, 2004 03:39 PM
The problem is, Beagle, the targets are soft by nature and the insurgents know it. It’s not Republicans we hate, it’s incompetence and apathy. It is shocking to us just how low the Republicans have allowed standards to fall on so many fronts. We can do better than we’re doing right now.
If you’re not willing to do better in the next few years, though, I guarantee one thing: We Democrats will step up to the plate. Maybe in previous years we bought your doctrine that you were better on defense, but we’ve had four years of this Republican government to get disabused of that notion.
You all could have achieved a great shift in American politics, if you had handled things in a less partisan way. Unfortunately, you had to insist on having things your way and no other. You had to insist that you knew best, and we were simply too weak-willed to fight the enemy right. Damn it, do you know how visceral of an insult that was?
You underestimated just how much Liberals and Democrats shifted their thinking after 9/11. You underestimated the passionate opposition you would create by making us the scapegoats for those failures. Of all things to do, why that? Why after our nation, our country united on 9/11, did you have to take our country down this course of division and diversion?
If you guys want us to quit complaining, quit screwing up.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 11, 2004 04:12 PMBeagle, Do you really think it’s that we hate Republicans or is it just the unjust war and the needless deaths that is bothering us on this left hand column?? Real carefull now. If there was a Dem doing this badly I’d want him out of office right now. Sheesh.
Posted by: rapidray at December 11, 2004 05:44 PMI am happy to find so many people on the blue side of this column are now in favor of increased spending on defense and larger armed forces.
Maybe those of you connected with major universities will insist that military recruiters be allowed on all campuses and that universities reinstate ROTC programs wherever there is a demand among students. The discrimination against the military on may liberal campuses is appalling. It might help the military get better officers if we all did their parts to give their students the opportunity to learn about and prepare for careers in the military.
The same goes for our intelligence services. Why should the CIA have to recruit off campus in so many places around our country? Recruiters visiting some of the area studies classes in the U.S. are sometimes treated as agents of a FOREIGN power. There is clear interest in these sorts of careers among students, but professors and administrators often look askance and the local luddites usually show up to chant their songs which usually start with “hey, hey, ho, ho” I wish they would come up with different ways to rhyme.
Recruiting off of college campus? Try recruiting from the immigrant populations. Have you considered the advantages to employing fluent Arab Speakers who know the language on the streets there?
One of our big troubles in penetrating Middle East societies, Senator Bob Graham argued, is that any European looking fellow we send there will stick out like a sore thumb. Because of our status as an immigration magnet, we are quite capable of drawing from a pool of first generation immigrants who know their languages and their cultures In a day and age like this, he argued, wouldn’t that be the inspired choice?
As for ROTC and other things on campus… I think it’s your favorite punching bag. There are going to be universities, especially on the Ivy League that go about things differently, and there are going to be places where the military isn’t popular. But how many colleges and universities actually do ban those things? It think it may be less of a problem than you think.
The issue I would take up, would be getting a pragmatic liberal voice out there in military affairs. I think the past decade-and-a-half has disproven the predictions of so many that history was ended, that war would never be needed again.
We don’t need to join you, I feel, because that would defeat the purpose of having us re-enter the discussion. We need to be the red team on these things for you red-state fellows.
The Republicans have become complacent in their military thinking, and the results have been disastrous. They’ve committed the sin of expecting the best of the essentially chaotic and perverse nature of war. They failed to plan for contingencies, they failed to plan farther than letting events take their own rein, they failed to take us into war under circumstance that supported our efforts and their legitimacy.
I think you guys think of war in the cinematic sense of it, in terms of the glory, the high tech marvels, and the spectacle, and forget about much of the nuts and bolts logistics and unglamorous necessities of war. A decent war movie nowadays probably runs you about 120 million. A small war, in reality, costs a thousand times that and lasts longer than just the third act of a two hour film.
Maybe in a movie, you can skip over the relationships with the locals to get to the action. But that’s done because the battles serve as plot points. In reality, in most wars, the turning points are social, are more complicated than what can be adequately shown in a two hour movie.
There’s more to foreign policy than storybook adventuring.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 11, 2004 09:27 PMStephen
We recruit immigrants and the sons and daughters of immigrants for the military, intelligence and foreign services. Speakers of certain hard languages are high priorities. Your suggestion is noted and was implemented some years ago.
I get a general feeling that many people on the blue side think something like “if only they would take our good suggestions …” First, there is no “them and us” here. All of our various services should be the responsibilities of all Americans. Second, most of the things I see suggested are things already being done. We are already working to recruit and train Arabic speakers. We are already studying the history and the culture of the regions. I know with complete certainty that we are working hard to recruit people of Middle Eastern descent into our diplomatic and intelligence services. Thanks for the suggestion, however.
The challenge is that even when you do all these things, it sometimes is not enough. We have adversaries who are also intelligent and trying to learn how to do us harm. Why are you surprised they sometimes succeed? I mentioned the analogy before. Even the best team gets some points scored against it and even loses some games. It doesn’t mean that they are stupid or imcompetent. It means the other teams also have some intelligent and able people.
ROTC on campus MY favorite punching bag? I have never written about it before. What made me think about it were all the recent news stories about military recruiters being excluded from campuses and not only the Ivies. I do believe it is disgraceful that a small group of liberal professors and administrators can impose their ideas on thousands of students. At universities that get public money, it is even more disgraceful. Presumably if students are not interested they will not show up for interviews. Give them the option. Give them the freedom to choose. I don’t ask their support; just get out of the way. That’s all I ask.
We could use more pragmatic liberal voices in the military. But it is the ideological liberal voices that make that almost impossible. The military is often unwelcome in the places where these liberal voices would be most likely recruited.
The historian John Lewis Gaddis tells a story about one of his students at Yale who announced, “I love this country. I love this place. Love what we are doing here tonight. I love it so much that I’m prepared to defend our right to do it, which is why I’m joining the Marines. It’s people like me who make it possible for people like you to be here doing what you are doing.” He’s right. I expect that all the professors got up and cheered.
Okay, there is a problem with equipment. That should be corrected. But it is more than ironic that those yelping the loudest about this problem are some of the same people who refuse to support budgets needed to buy that equipment (even voting against the 87 billion), oppose things like ROTC, interfere with military recruiting and – in short – do everything possible to make this kind of thing more likely.
So let’s all agree here. Rumsfeld screwed up and should suffer the consequence. We also screwed up by not supporting our military with the budgets it evidently needs. We also have to give it more manpower, so we are all resolved to support recruiting. We need more liberal voices and better trained, officers, so we are all resolved to support recruiting on elite campuses and all campuses. We will also support recruiting by our clandestine and intelligence services of more “non-traditional” applicants and will support their recruiting them on campuses around the country.
Kerry’s negative vote on the supplemental bill was not made to deprive soldiers of supplies, but to oppose the very kind of porkbarrel spending that has robbed our soldiers of the funding needed for armor, and to oppose tax cuts that have no business being made in the unpredictable fiscal context of a war.
I apologize if I ascribed any habits to you that did not trully exist, but I have heard the ROTC complaint before. I honestly think if you go to war for the right reasons, you don’t even need ROTC. People will enlist on their own, just like they did after 9/11. Hell, that program’s mostly a peacetime affair if you really think about it: college education paid for, in exchange for military service afterwards.
The problem with recruitment for Bush and his people is Clauswitzian. In short, it’s a matter of what he called moral force. If you want soldiers to charge into danger willingly, he’s got to believe his courage is doing something. If you want people to enlist, they have to believe it’s going to do something. The mistake Bush made by intentionally dividing our country on the war was that he hemorrhaged moral support for the war. There wasn’t that sense of We’re in this together that glued us together on the first battles in the War on Terrorism. Here, the only thing that glued us together was cynicism and dislike about Saddam Hussein concerning his threat to our country. When we found out he wasn’t quite the real threat the administration told us he was, that was the end of that.
The deceptive nature of the case for war robbed us of the sense of bipartisan unity. The radical nature of the war, being a first strike, an invasion and occupation with potential (now actual) foreign policy fallout, required a higher standard of evidence to maintain it’s moral force. Being right on what was going on in Iraq was important because it was what allowed many to swallow their objections to getting involved. When we thought there was an actual threat, all questions of whether this was a Neocon vendetta or a foreign policy mistake were irrelevant. Survival is survival. Had that remained the case, we would not be discussing this point the way we are now.
The intelligence failure, and the dishonest behavior that brought it about fractured support for this war, because its unified support among the American people was conditioned on a threat to our survival, not just our political primacy in the world. It strikes at the question of whether this war is truly a matter of defense, or just a matter of geopolitical distraction.
That is where you lose the liberals. We know all too well the price of attempting to reset the political alignment of a region by force, and we aren’t interested in repeating the same mistakes over and over.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 12, 2004 11:59 AMGood article, Stephen.
Bush is famous for ignoring reporter’s tough questions. He just did it again yesterday,
Bush did not say anything about the matter yesterday, but he teased reporters by cupping his hand to his ear as he walked across the White House’s South Lawn to his helicopter, as if to invite a question. Asked whether he was upset about Kerik, the president smiled and cupped his hand to his ear again, even though he appeared to have heard the question.
There’s a really good book on spin in general, and Bush administration spin in particular, “All the President’s Spin”. The authors point out,
By early 2004, reporters became so desperate to get the President to talk to them that they began calling his dog Barney as Bush got off the presidential helicopter, hoping to make him come get the terrier and answer some questions in the process.
I think it’s great that reporter with the Guard unit is listening to the troops and pointing out opportunities to get their concerns taken seriously.
Ha, Ha, AP. Barney will likely give us more substance.
Posted by: Greg at December 13, 2004 02:13 AMStephen:
“Kerry’s negative vote on the supplemental bill was not made to deprive soldiers of supplies, but to oppose the very kind of porkbarrel spending that has robbed our soldiers of the funding needed for armor,”
I agree. The military currently uses 56% of our tax dollars on defense. They’ve got more than enough of our money, but are spending it extremely unwisely. Equipping our troops should always come first - even when it comes to a misguided and totally unnecessary war like the one we are fighting in Iraq.
They must have everything they need - because their future health and their _very lives_ depend upon it!
“and to oppose tax cuts that have no business being made in the unpredictable fiscal context of a war.”
Absolutely. Especially since military spending will never be cut during wartime, but will most likely increase. It boggles the mind when you consider that 40% of the lost revenue from those tax cuts only benefitted the wealthiest sector - the very people who in the past were made to help offset the costs of war.
And this means that everything else - education, job training, social services (9% currently), healthcare and research (6%), income security (6%), administration of justice (4%), natural resources and the environment (4%), international affairs (3%), general science, space, technology (3%), transportation (3%), general government (2%), community and regional development (2%), other (2%) can be the only things which suffer because of that lost revenue - while our insane deficit soars ever higher.
There is nothing CONSERVATIVE about what these Neo-con bastards have been doing - it is blatantly RADICAL and DANGEROUS policy.
The fact that such a large number of Republican’s are so eager to defend this administration’s irresponsible decisions and failures is something I find completely incomprehensible. It seems like all blind belief - emotion overriding reason and common sense.
Posted by: Adrienne at December 13, 2004 12:53 PMBeagle —
So if the soldier hadn’t said so the insurgents would never know there was a convoy headed “north.” This highly sensitive data has now made it possible for terrorists to see a long line of trucks driving through the desert, whereas before they would have been completely invisible.
I gotta tell ya, I’m so sick of the “Yeah, but you’re a traitor!” defense I could just barf.
Posted by: Alejo at December 13, 2004 01:01 PM
